November 2, 2012 … Believe and Be Saved!!

Chronological Bible Reading Plan - Day 307

Passage of the Day: Reference of Today’s Chronological Bible Study: Mark, Chapters 11 To study these chapters, go to this link -
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Passage of the Day: Reference of Today’s Chronological Bible Study: John, Chapters 12 To study these chapters, go to this link -

Highlight Passages: Mark 11: 27-28 : [NLT] … {In Mark 11, Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly and begins to head down the final stretch of His ministry on earth; but He has angered the city officials, clearing the Temple of merchants for the second time; and He had the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin all upset, claiming that He is the prophesied “Son of Man” and The Messiah.} ...  27 By this time they [i.e., the religious leaders] had arrived in Jerusalem again. As Jesus was walking through the Temple area, the leading priests, the teachers of religious law, and the other leaders came up to him. They demanded, 28“By whose authority did you drive out the merchants from the Temple? Who gave you such authority?” … 
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Highlight Passages: John 12: 37-43 : [NLT] … {John, in Chapter 12 in the following passage, writes a segment of prophetic explanation about the people seeing all the miracles Jesus performed and still being unwilling to believe (i.e., trust and surrender to Him as Messiah). This was all a fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophesies over 700 years before Christ. } ...  37 But despite all the miraculous signs He had done, most of the people did not believe in Him. 38 This is exactly what Isaiah the prophet had predicted: “Lord, who has believed our message? To whom will the Lord reveal his saving power?” [Fulfillment of Is. 53: 1] 
39 But the people couldn’t believe, for as Isaiah also said, 40“The Lord has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts—so their eyes cannot see, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.” [Fulfillment of Is. 6: 10] 
41 Isaiah was referring to Jesus when he made this prediction, because he was given a vision of the Messiah’s glory. 42 Many people, including some of the Jewish leaders, believed in him. But they wouldn’t admit it to anyone because of their fear that the Pharisees would expel them from the synagogue. 43 For they loved human praise more than the praise of God. 
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Reference Passage: Romans 1: 28-29 : [NLT] … { When mankind cannot believe in God (i.e., the trusting/clinging type of belief required for salvation) in spite of ample evidence in creation and/or history, God will give them over to their own selfish desires and choices. } 28 When they refused to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their evil minds and let them do things that should never be done. 29 Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, fighting, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip.  

My Journal for Today: In reading through these two chapters of the Gospels according to Mark and John, I couldn’t help but reflect personally on how easy it was during my college years to drift away from my childhood moorings in Christianity, refusing to believe in Christ as Whom He claimed to be. Really, I was like those in Jesus’ day, hearing the truth of Jesus as they even saw His wondrous miracles first-hand; and still they couldn’t believe. I was like the hearts of mankind, written about by Paul in Romans 1. God won’t force mankind to believe in Him; and if they (we) choose to refuse to believe – in spite of the evidence of Jesus’ divinity – He simply turns them (us) over to their (our) own hearts. And that, of course, is the heart written about in God’s word in Jeremiah 17: 9, linked for your reading here. 

For many years in my life, even having studied the New Testament in a course in college, I simply refused to look at the evidence for Jesus being the God-Man. And my heart was set, as described in Jer. 17:9 and Romans 1: 18-32 [also linked], on my own selfish desires/pleasures; and God let me spiral downhill into my own tarpit of sin … until finally I bottomed out and could only look up and see God, in Christ, for Whom He really was and is. And I finally came to that place where, as did the disciples of Christ in His day, I couldn’t deny Jesus; and I believed. And when I did, He saved me and brought me to Himself. And so, pardon me as I take a moment to say …  

HALLELUJAH!!! … Thank you for allowing me that moment of thankfulness.

But it’s so easy for anyone to let their own sinful heart blind them to the truth. And it’s not until anyone – prayerfully any reader here – can come to the end of self and BELIEVE – totally and utterly in surrender – in Jesus as The Christ. Only then can Jesus cover them [you] with the blood He shed on the cross, … about which I’ll be reading very soon in my chronological read through the New Testament.

So, let me stop here and pray that you – anyone who’s reading along with me hee – have surrendered your life, in faith and clinging belief, to Christ as Your Savior … AND LORD. Because, until you do, God is going to allow you (as Paul wrote about in Romans 1) to believe in yourself, which will lead only to a selfish slide into hell.

My Prayer Today: … Lord, I pray that anyone reading my words today believes totally in You as Messiah and will join me in heaven – WITH YOU – forever. Amen